Polypedates maculatus (Gray, 1830)

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Family: Rhacophoridae > Subfamily: Rhacophorinae > Genus: Polypedates > Species: Polypedates maculatus

Hyla maculata Gray, 1830, Illust. Indian Zool., Part 3: pl. 82. Type(s): Based on animal pictured in original plate; possibly originally in collection of Major-General Thomas Hardwicke; location possibly in BMNH at one time, but now unknown and presumed lost. Type locality: "Bengal" [India and Bangladesh].

Bürgeria maculata Tschudi, 1838, Classif. Batr.: 34, 75. Syntypes: MNHNP "No. 44" (2 specimens), by original designation. Type locality: "Küste von Malabar" (= Coast of Malabar, India). Biju, 2001, Occas. Publ. Indian Soc. Conserv. Biol., 1: 8, noted the imprecision of this type locality. Synonymy by Boulenger, 1882, Cat. Batr. Sal. Coll. Brit. Mus., Ed. 2: 88. [Note, this is not a nomen nudum as previously reported and not coined as a synonym of Hyla maculata Gray, which Tschudi considered to be a junior synonym of Polypedates leucomystax—DRF.]

Hyla Reynoudi Tschudi, 1838, Classif. Batr.: 34, 75. Proposed as an objective synonym of Hyla maculata Gray, 1834, referencing the jar label name of the syntypes of Bürgeria maculata Tschudi, 1838.

Polypedates maculatusGünther, 1859 "1858", Cat. Batr. Sal. Coll. Brit. Mus.: 78. Günther, 1864, Rept. Brit. India: 428.

Rhacophorus maculatusBoulenger, 1882, Cat. Batr. Sal. Coll. Brit. Mus., Ed. 2: 83.

Rhacophorus acanthostomus Werner, 1901, Zool. Anz., 24: 98. Holotype: ZMB. Type locality: "Ratnapura, Ceylon". Synonymy by Kirtisinghe, 1957, Amph. Ceylon: 55. S. Dutta (personal comm.) regards this synonymy as unlikely, the name more probably belonging to the synonymy of Polypedates crucifer, Polypedates eques, or Polypedates longinasus.

Rhacophorus (Polypedates) maculatusBourret, 1927, Fauna Indochine, Vert., 3: 264.

Rhacophorus (Rhacophorus) maculatusAhl, 1931, Das Tierreich, 55: 133; Dubois, 1987 "1986", Alytes, 5: 77.

Rhacophorus (Rhacophorus) acanthostomusAhl, 1931, Das Tierreich, 55: 120, 137.

Rhacophorus leucomystax maculatusWolf, 1936, Bull. Raffles Mus., 12: 181.

English Names

Spotted Tree Frog (Gray, 1830, Illust. Indian Zool., Part 1: pl. 82; Mathew and Sen, 2010, Pict. Guide Amph. NE India: 105; de Silva, 2009, Amph. Rep. Sri Lanka Photograph. Guide: 127).

Common Indian Tree-frog (Günther, 1864, Rept. Brit. India: 428).

Common Tree Frog (Daniel and Sekar, 1989, J. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc., 86: 199; Daniels, 2005, Amph. Peninsular India: 164).

Spotted Whipping Frog (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 113; Shrestha, 2001, Herpetol. Nepal: 93).

Indian Tree Frog (Das and Dutta, 1998, Hamadryad, 23: 67).

Chunam Frog (Schleich, Anders, and Kästle, 2002, in Schleich and Kästle (eds.), Amph. Rept. Nepal: 80; Daniels, 2005, Amph. Peninsular India: 164; Dinesh, Radhakrishnan, Gururaja, and Bhatta, 2009, Rec. Zool. Surv. India, Occas. Pap., 302: 114).

Common Indian Tree Frog (Polypedates maculatus maculatus: Das and Dutta, 1998, Hamadryad, 23: 67).

Common Indian Treefrog (Zug, 2022, Smithson. Contrib. Zool., 653: 43).

Big-headed Whipping Frog (Dinesh, Radhakrishnan, Deepak, and Kulkarni, 2023, Fauna India Checklist, vers. 5.0 : 12).

Distribution

Below 3000 m from Nepal, Bhutan, and Sikkim south throughout India except the northeastern states and Haryana, Rajasthan, and Punjab; Bangladesh; Sri Lanka; Myanmar (Chin and Magway). 

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka

Comment

Records of this species from the Northeast of India likely apply to Polypedates himalayensis following Gogoi and Sengupta, 2017, Das (ed.), Diversity Ecol. Amph. India: 32–48. In the Rhacophorus (Rhacophorus) leucomystax group of Dubois, 1987 "1986", Alytes, 5: 77; see comment under Polypedates. See account (as Rhacophorus leucomystax maculatus) by Kirtisinghe, 1957, Amph. Ceylon: 55-58. Discussed by Dubois, 1987 "1986", Alytes, 5: 82-85 (who noted that this is likely a complex of species), Daniel and Sekar, 1989, J. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc., 86: 199, and Dutta and Manamendra-Arachchi, 1996, Amph. Fauna Sri Lanka: 179-182. Chanda, 2002, Handb. Indian Amph.: 171-172, 220-221, and Sarkar and Ray, 2006, In Alfred (ed.), Fauna of Arunachal Pradesh, Part 1: 309-310, provided brief accounts for India. Ray, 1999, Mem. Zool. Surv. India, 18: 72-77, provided an account. Anders, 2002, in Schleich and Kästle (eds.), Amph. Rept. Nepal: 325-330, provided an account, figure, and map for the Nepal population. See brief account by Shrestha, 2001, Herpetol. Nepal: 93-94. Sarkar, Biswas, and Ray, 1992, State Fauna Ser., 3: 92, provided a brief account for West Bengal, India. Dutta, 1997, Amph. India Sri Lanka: 96-97, provided systematic notes, access to literature, and range. Daniels, 2005, Amph. Peninsular India: 164-167, provided an account for peninsular India. Agnihotri, 2002, Cobra, Chennai, 50: 25-26, provided a record for Rajasthan, northwestern India. Mehta, 2005, in Alfred (ed.), Fauna W. Himalaya, Part 2: 270, reported the species in Himanchal Pradesh, India, without noting specific localities. Mathew and Sen, 2010, Pict. Guide Amph. NE India: 105, provided a brief characterization and a photograph. Das and Dutta, 2007, Hamadryad, 31: 154–181, noted a number of larval descriptions in the literature. de Silva, 2009, Amph. Rep. Sri Lanka Photograph. Guide: 127, provided a brief account and color photograph for Sri Lanka. See Shah and Tiwari, 2004, Herpetofauna Nepal: 79, for brief account. Sivaprasad, 2013, Common Amph. Kerala: 152–153, provided a brief account, photograph, and dot map for Kerala, India. See Subba, Aravind, and Ravikanth, 2016, Check List, 13(1: 2033): 10–11, for Sikkim, India, record. Wangyal and Gurung, 2012, Frog Leg, 18: 38, provided a record for Bhutan, as Polypedates cf himalayanus. Sharma, 2005, Frog Leg, 12: 3, provided a range map for the state of Rajasthan, India. Deuti, Sethy, and Ray, 2014, Rec. Zool. Surv. India, 114: 136–137, provided a  brief account for the Eastern Ghats population, India. Sreekumar and Dinesh, 2020, Rec. Zool. Surv. India, 120: 33–40, discussed the range in Maharashtra, India, in terms of agro-climatic zones. Prasad, Gautam, Gupta, Murthy, Ramesh, Shinde, and Das, 2020, Zootaxa, 4851: 450–476, reported on morphology and advertisement call for a population in the Panna Tiger Reserve, Madhya Pradesh, central India. Khatiwada, Wang, Zhao, Xie, and Jiang, 2021, Asian Herpetol. Res., 12: 1–35, discussed the genetics of the Nepal population. Gayen, Dey, and Roy, 2021, Zoos' Print J., 36: 33–39, reported a record from Durgapur Subdivision, West Bengal, India. Zug, 2022, Smithson. Contrib. Zool., 653: 43, briefly discussed habitat, range, and identification in Myanmar. Srinivasulu and Kumar, 2022, J. Threatened Taxa, 14: 21268, reported the species from the state of Telangana, south-central India. Rout, Mahapatra, and Sahoo, 2022, Curr. Herpetol., Kyoto, 41: 180–195, reported on larval oral and buccopharyngeal morphology. Raj, Vasudevan, Aggarwal, Dutta, Sahoo, Mahapatra, Sharma, Janani, Kar, and Dubois, 2023, Alytes, 39–40: 108–112, reported on larval morphology of specimens from Odisha, India.

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